on February 19, 2013
I’ve shot these over the last couple of days in Varanasi. The colors are so fuckin’ awesome in India. Every corner you go around has awesome shit everywhere. Even when it sucks, India is pretty cool looking. Here’s what I got:
The yellow one is my hog. It’s a Bajaj Chetak. Sweet.
Cows are everywhere out here. And let me tell you, it is culturally inappropriate to punch a cow in the face or kick it straight in its god’am mangey udder.
At first glance, this appears to simply be some cows. However, if you look closer, you can see that the whiteish cow is the richest 1 percent of Americans shitting where they live and doing whatever they want, while the cow turned to face the viewer is the American public weeping and screaming through their oppression: “What the fuck are you doing to us?!?!”
Some steps off one of the Ghats.
Early morning.
This dude’s kingdom for some shoes.
Gesticulations!
This dude is lost in a market in an alley in a city in a country on a planet in space. He’s fucked.
The buildings are really pretty out here. The British knew how to cobble shit together.
Neat railings.
There are monkeys on the red building’s second floor ledge. Pretty as hell.
Nice doors all up in this joint.
This is a lingam. It’s a vagina and a penis melded into one. The Vedic traditions pray to it. They pour milk on it. Slowly. Sensuously. Oh, yeah.
This kid wanted a picture more than anything. He was a slick pimp.
Sweet door.
Sweet cupola.
This wall was fucking cool! I took three shots of it.
Neat colors!
A nice, focused shot of the wall.
This dude makes chai and probably some yogurty thing.
Another door. Sweet.
People run down this alley with corpses every couple of minutes shouting to Ram and some other manifestations of the Godhead. The wood is for burning bodies.
This dude’s cool.
An alley.
Wood for corpse burning. This dude is checking the classifieds trying to find something with more opportunity for upward mobility.
A bike. To the left of the bike is a white powder on the ground. That’s bleach. They put it all over everything here. I’m assuming it’s to stop Victorian diseases.
A cupola off of the burning Ghats.
This is a shot of the burning Ghats. It’s where bodies are burned. Apparently, if you die here or are burned here, it helps you break samsara. Or something.
A fort wall near the burning Ghats.
A saree factory off of a Ghat.
A tower.
A cool Ganesh painting down by the water. The walls around here are covered in cool stuff.
Some porches on the Archeological Society’s building.
I had one.
The mountings on this building were amazing!
Some cool-looking advertisements. Probably for goiter creams.
A cool wall.
Some cool porch ornamentation.
Col-looking wall.
Jism-2; Come Again?
Ganesh. On a storefront.
This cow gives exactly zero fucks.
A sweet turquoise door.
The THE
Kids in a doorway
Kids in a doorway; alternate crop
A cupola
Boatrides past the burning Ghats. Fun!
This monkey glared at me for 3 days. Finally I gave him the banana I wear on my belt and he fucked off.
A water pump station.
“Where do we drop the bombs, sir?” “You’ll know when you see it, corporal.”
That brown mess on the wall is cow shit. A guy feeds this cow, collects the shit, dries it and then sells it to people with no sense of smell to use as fire fuel.
Ahhh… I get it. Wait. No. I don’t. What?
Some houses facing the Ghats.
Some forts along the Ghats.
My name’s Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram. You can call me Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Sri Ram Jay Ram Jay Jay for short.
The only thing more omnipresent than hippies searching for themselves (barf) is photographers. If you stop to photograph something, they’ll sidle up next to you and start taking photographs. They may not know what they’re shooting, but, by god, they’re not going to miss a shot.
Ghat Skyline
This lady’s praying. She pouring some milk into the water. She just finished bathing in it. Shit’s filthy.
A Ghat. There’s this chubby lady by the orange cloths taking a photo of an old woman sitting there, praying. She shot photos of this woman for the better part of 30 minutes. What a bitch.
Wide angle shot of a Ghat.
Nice 50mm shot of the same Ghat.
Cool porches.
Sweet electrical poles and cupolas all making out and writhing together in architectural and compositional ecstasy.